This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I’m recommending Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young.
Emery Blackwood’s life was changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing exactly what her teenage self-swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family tea shop. But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, is the day August returns to the island for the first time in 14 years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget.
August knows he is not welcome on Saoirse, not after the night everything changed. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. He’s returned to bury his mother’s ashes and sell her cottage, but doing so will force him to confront the people who turned their backs on him and face Emery—the one wound from his past that has never truly healed. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily’s mysterious death once and for all.
In her adult debut, Young spins a compelling tale with hints of magical realism and strong notes of both Gothic and literary fiction making it a perfect read for fans of Kate Morton and Alice Hoffman.
Check out Spells for Forgetting and other spellbinding books like it at the Sioux City Public Library.
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